bulletin column from August 15, 2021

Dear friends at Saint Mary’s Immaculate Conception Parish and Saint Frances Cabrini Parish:

Every August without fail we look forward to the celebration of the Solemn Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This year it lands on a Sunday meaning that it takes precedence over the usual Ordinary Time readings and propers of that day, and therefore possibly adding some extra emphasis to the Feast this year.

You all know the Dogma that is celebrated. At the end of her life on earth, the Blessed Virgin Mary was joined body and soul to full, heavenly communion with her Son. His body is a glorified and resurrected body that transcends the boundaries of matter and time, and her resurrected body is of the same nature. It is the same destiny that all of us hope to enjoy one day at the Final Judgment, for we do believe, as the Creed states, in “the resurrection of the body.” Body and soul belong together in harmony and the fullness of redemption will occur for us when our souls again receive our body, a body that is perfected, resurrected, transformed, and glorified. The Blessed Mother has already received all of this in advance of us as the necessary result of her life without sin, one that was always oriented totally to God.

The Blessed Mother remains in Heaven a female, body and soul. Souls are either male or female. God fashions bodies for us that are the total expression of our soul, meaning our bodies are either male or female. There are no exceptions to this ever. The body that we have is the perfect expression of the soul that we have, and the two are intimately joined as one harmonious entity. Any type of discord that we experience between our bodies and our interior selves is a manifestation of the fallen world and is only healed or mended through grace.

It is a heresy and a violation of human dignity to believe that a male body somehow has a female soul or vise versa; that trapped inside of our exterior body is a soul of some other variety that does not match our body. It is a heresy and is gravely wrong to believe that somehow we have to modify our bodies to match our souls. Our body is the only body that our soul has. It is the body that God intended us to have as a physical expression of the soul that he gave us at our conception when we came into existence. To believe other than this is to advance a vision of the human person that only leads to frustration, pain, and misery. The pathway to interior peace requires the acceptance that our bodies and souls are not in opposition to each other.

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother is a perfect opportunity to again affirm the beautiful truth of the unity of the body and the soul. The Blessed Mother, and this Solemn Feast Day, stand in firm and loving opposition to any modern attempts to re-define bodily gender. Those attempts are totally and completely opposed to God’s plan for humanity and for our happiness. Let us ask the Blessed Mother, Assumed body and soul into heaven, to pray for us and our Western world so that we will have the charity and confidence to clearly explain these simple truths to everyone who is presently confused about them.